Assessment of the Strengthening of Existing Benchmark Monorail Railway Bridge: A Case Study of a Generic Method for Lateral Reinforcement

In order to cope with the increasing volume of transportation, many railway bridges are in need of being strengthened especially for the reinforced concrete lightweight pier bridge. An original strengthening dynamic performance evaluation of a benchmark monorail heavy haul rail bridge is carried out in this study, with different alternatives, the vehicle-bridge coupling system model is set up based on the time-varying theory. After extensive numerical testing, the dynamic responses of the bridge and the running safety of the vehicle are calculated for different strengthening alternatives using the program Dynamic Interaction Analysis for Heavy-Haul Train-Bridge System. The responses of the bridge and RS indexes of the vehicle are all meeting the requirements of the specifications concerned. The present study verifies that the strengthening of the bridge is desirable for the lateral stiffness reinforcement method of the bridge, in contrast with the field measured data. The present research proposed a feasible and generic method for the lateral vibration control of railway bridges.